


No One Wants An Unhappy Person Working In A Morgue

by RueRambunctious



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Molly Hooper Appreciation, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-27 09:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15021368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RueRambunctious/pseuds/RueRambunctious
Summary: ...Not that they want a particularly happy one either.Years after helping Sherlock 'fall' Molly runs into Jim. He's been keeping an eye on her... and what she's been hiding.





	1. Chapter 1

Molly rather likes bookstores still. The internet is all very well, granting her swift access to all sorts of objects and people, but she did not grow up with it in her early childhood. She learnt to read alongside cassette tapes that came with girls’ comics bought by her father, and grieved the loss of ‘Bunty’ and ‘Mandy’ when the world insisted girls needed to know which boy band members would most appreciate their taste in affordable lipstick and their quiz results on skin types and body types and whatever else was marketable. Molly Hooper found refuge in a few dog-eared, orphan girls’ manga in her local library (before its closure) and bravely sought out their kin in a cramped, male-dominated comic shop who ordered in instalment after instalment for her. Molly wasn’t great with boys, or peers her age, or people in general, but she felt safer in those days tracing her fingers down numbered spines than she ever did when curling her fingers in the cord of a phone trying to keep up with her girlfriends or around a cigarette trying to seem mature before one of those girls’ elder brother.  
Molly Hooper is a grown woman now, not scared of boys or statement lipstick, but she always breathes a sigh of relief upon entering a space where her nostrils fill with the familiar, comforting scent of books.

So it is a surprise when a pair of hands clasp abruptly around her arms from behind and a familiar voice leans towards her ear to purr, “Hello, Nose!”

Molly predictably drops the two books she had come looking for, but the one her fingers had sought out on their own she holds firm, and she swings around to hit Jim with it.

He yelps with a little surprise and enough genuine pain that Molly feels less disgruntled and more gratified. “What have I _told_ you about sneaking up on me?” she hisses. She grabs Jim by the arm and drags him further behind the cover of bookshelves lest their noise draws any unwanted attention their way.

“No need to get amorous, Mollikins,” Jim teases.

“No need to get yourself a hole in the skull when I bash it in with this book for sneaking up on me like that!” Molly growls.

Jim rolls his eyes. “You never quite understood foreplay, did you?”

Molly glares at him. “Really? Seb said something different to you, did he?”

Jim’s smirk shrinks and he presses his lips together. “He forgave me a long time ago.”

“Well good for him, but _some of us_ have barely seen you since you made me-“ Molly’s snarl cuts off as Jim covers her mouth.

“Implicating yourself in a public place, Nose? This life getting boring for you?” Jim leans close to drawl. Anyone who stumbles across them in this moment might think them lovers and it tightens Molly’s stomach and her brow simultaneously.

“All these years and you still haven’t learned any concept of personal space?” Molly responds loftily.

Jim breathes in. “Oh, you _have_ missed me, haven’t you?” he whispers. “Goody.”

“I haven’t missed you, or the trouble you cause, one _bit_ ,” insists Molly.

“Such big lies for such a _good_ girl, Mollikins,” Jim smirks.

Molly pushes against him to raise the heavy book in her grasp aloft. She ignores the warmth of his familiar skin and mutters coolly, “I’m not too good to hit you again, Jim...”

His demeanour suggests he believes she will strike him and he takes a marginal step back from Molly. However, his lips take on that achingly familiar, wickedly playful curl and he whispers, “If you make it interesting, Nose, maybe I’ll let you...”

Molly scowls and hits him with the book, twice, _hard_ , then drags him down another book-lined aisle lest the loud noise draws anyone. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” she whispers fiercely.

Jim rolls his freshly sore jaw. “Getting more bruises than papercuts it would seem.”

“Years, Jim. Barely more than a blog comment in years and now you show up?” says Molly.

“Just in time to interrupt you buying... honestly Moll, children’s books?” Jim’s nose wrinkles.

“Sulky because Mummy never read you any, Jim?” Molly asks dryly.

He grimaces. “You know that’s not funny.”

“Oh, so not everything is a joke to you then?” responds Molly.

Jim’s expression is cool. “And you have no sense of humour I suppose?” he says. “You, who faked my death _and_ Sherlock’s?”

Molly blinks and turns away. She suddenly feels awkward. She feels awkard after all this time of not feeling awkward at all. Or at least, a normal amount. These past few years she has passed for _normal_. She’s been _okay_ , she’s certain of it. 

...Perhaps.

How _dare_ Jim come back here and throw all her beliefs back up in the air. With him gone Molly Hooper has tried so _terribly_ to keep everything deep down inside, in secret, quiet. She has tried so hard to seem normal.

“Why are you back, Jim?” Molly asks.

Jim looks away and tilts his chin the way he does when he is not entirely inclined to answer. “You know that we’ve been keeping an eye on you..?”

Molly rolls her eyes. “My creepy ex boyfriend keeping tabs on me? How is that surprising?”

“Nose. _Molly_.” Jim looks eerily serious and he licks dry lips warily. “Seb and I, we’ve been reading your stories...”

The remaining book drops from Molly’s slack grip. 

Eventually she turns her chin to avoid whatever is in Jim’s gaze. All Molly says is, “Oh.”


	2. Chapter 2

Molly's hands are shaking and she knows exactly why that is so, but the way Jim licks his lips and watches her with wide, perplexed eyes suggests she still has one over on him. Confusion is a rare, beautiful look on the Irishman's face… especially when it is fresh and abrupt enough to be a soft moment; the expression that comes before the sulky, dangerous thundercloud from a puzzle that evades him.

The trick with Jim, you see, is to never let him know you have been cleverer than he.

Molly Hooper hides her face by kneeling to pick up the large book she had dropped. She stays on the floor for a moment feeling a pang of guilt for the fresh creases the mistreated thing bears. She'll have to buy it now. Molly smooths out the damage with distracted fingers and notices a run in her tights. Typical. The badly worn wax of the old bookshop's wooden floorboards is too scarred and sparse to show Molly a mirror of herself, but Jim's patent toes encroach upon her view and cast up images she does not want to see.

Molly stands and smooths down her skirt with the same absent-minded efficiency with which she stroked the book in her hands moments before. She takes a step backwards as though the smell of Jim's cologne creeps towards her face of its own accord. It's so much _stronger_ than Molly remembers. If Peter Pan's shadow could really explore of its own volition then the ghost of Jim in Molly's life must have been separated from the real Jim long enough to develop the decency not to smell so _strongly_. The upsetting scent overwhelms Molly's senses and she has to shake her head a little to clear it. She spins around and takes a brisk step in the opposite direction just to feel less pinned by that spectre of something that makes promises Molly refuses to be foolish enough to touch.

“You're just going to say, 'Oh,' and leave?” Jim asks. His voice is a cloying, playful drawl but Molly hears its undertones perfectly. He wants an explanation.

She'll keep _him_ wanting for once. “I'm not a criminal, Jim,” Molly says, because she can't quite bring herself to say, ' _no_.' “I need to pay for my things.”

Jim reaches for her weapon ineffectively, not seeming to understand it is her excuse to stay. Molly keeps the book out of his grasp easily.

Then he puts his hand on her hip. He's only trying to hold her still so he can snatch from her grasp but Molly flinches with a stronger reaction than she expects.

Jim looks surprised again. That little bit of flesh between his dark brows is creasing even further, but is ostensibly not with annoyance yet. Jim looks something like concerned, and if Molly didn't know any better she would read his microexpression as 'hurt'.

Molly does not dare apologise. The fingerbeds of her nails turn white as she grips her book as tightly as she would like to hold Jim… if she was stupid.

His hand withdraws from the cheap fabric of her clothes. Her hip hurts like he did something far harsher than touched her with casual familiarity. She hurts.

Molly swallows and trots away swiftly in the beat where they both acknowledge Jim is no longer touching her. It occurs to her that she is walking in the opposite direction from the cash desk and she curses her awful instincts.

She browses instead for the books she had abandoned upon Jim's arrival. Perhaps she is now lingering more than saving face, but she's looking at the shelves with more urgency and purpose than she ever normally would. Molly wants to tell Jim to go away, but not enough to actually open her mouth.

“Are we really not going to talk about this?” he asks.

Molly is quiet. Her free hand trembles so much as she traces it along book spines that she cannot read any of the titles. Her eyes are not watering.

“ _Nose_ ,” Jim says. It sounds oddly plaintive, which is absurd because although Jim has always been whiny he never really cares about anything. Except perhaps playing games.

“You didn't have to come back,” Molly whispers.

She closes her eyes as Jim's cologne approaches her once more, and then she hears his expensive shoes step closer. He lifts his hand but before Molly can flinch from the touch he reaches for one of his cufflinks and fusses with it. “You're no fun,” the Irishman says.

Molly's words almost choke her. “So you can leave,” she says brightly. She stays rooted to the spot.

Jim's arms make a swift motion in Molly's peripheral vision that feels like displeasure and she turns around. He is tugging the forelock of his dark hair agitatedly. It is considerably higher up his large forehead than the last time they spoke, but Jim looks no less handsome for it.

“Make up your mind, Nose,” Jim growls softly.

Jim's ire scares Molly less than the other things. She straightens and pushes away from the bookshelf. “I've got what I need,” she says, raising the books she holds higher, but still close to her chest as though they can somehow create a defensive barrier between the Irishman, his scent, and her. Her feelings.

Molly's cold logic drives her sensible-shoed feet towards the cash register.

Jim snatches her wrist and spins her around. His eyes are wide, his nostrils flaring, skin white and cracked lips parted. Jim looks at her.

Molly stays still as though it might somehow save her. Her heart pounds against the cage of her ribs as though desperate to be heard.

He doesn't see her secret, but Jim doesn't believe Molly's dismissal either.

The pages under her fingers feel fresh enough to cut. “Let me go,” she says quietly. 

“Haven't I tried that?” Jim asks, brows raised is a reasonable expression as though he knows what it is to be that way.

Molly presses her lips together and draws her own brows down. “You died, Jim. You don't get to change your mind.”

He opens his mouth to argue but Molly primly approaches the cashier and places her books on the desk.

The bookseller's lips pucker and dexterous fingers glide over the misused cover of one of the books. “I think we have other copies in better condition; I could ask someone to..?”

“She hit me with it,” Jim announces, coming to stand by Molly's side. His tone is flat and mocking and sour and _off_ and only he does not seem to notice or care. The cashier cringes a little and tries to think of a pleasant response.

Molly drums her fingers softly on the desk because if her hands start shaking again she won't be able to use her card; in fact she'll probably fumble opening her purse and spill its contents everywhere. “I want that one. Thank you.”

The staff member smiles awkwardly and anxiously does as bid. Molly takes her books with a smile that is much less warm than the cashier is used to from her and a dazed customer service smile fades after them. 

Jim tries to take Molly's bag or her hand as they exit the shop… Molly is not sure which, but suddenly she finds she has his face in her palm, and it's hotter than normal, and their ears are ringing with the noise of her slap.

“Did… I deserve that one?” Jim asks. He sounds genuinely uncertain, but there's a familiar undertone of warning in his voice. Molly takes her hand away and exposes the vivid red mark on his cheek.

“I don't know,” Molly says honestly. She flexes her red hand with a dissociative expression.

She can tell his face smarts from the sour sharpness of his lilting voice. “Come speak to Sebastian; he understands your ridiculous little emotions better than I can,” Jim says curtly.

Molly shakes her head slowly. “I'm not playing, Jim.”

“You don't decide that,” he says sharply, and his eyes darken as Molly pushes past him.

“Don't you _dare_ turn your back on me, Nose,” Jim cautions heavily.

Molly's body almost twitches with the force of the threat in his voice but she keeps walking bravely. “I'm not afraid of ghosts, Jim.”

“You can't expect to send me back when you've spent so long trying to resurrect me,” Jim calls after her.

“Since when do you listen to anything other than your own whims?” Molly asks over her shoulder.

Jim's eyes flicker. “I've taken your advice before, haven't I?”

Molly turns tiredly. “It's not the same.”

“Nose,” he says softly. Molly tries to ignore him. She's making a mess of this. If she's puzzling in her motives that will only leave Jim a reason to become interested.

“I've grown up and moved on,” Molly says shortly. “Ignore what I wrote.”

Jim raises his voice over the noise of the traffic. “You missed me, Molly Hooper.”

“You have a terribly high opinion of yourself, Jim 'from I.T.',” Molly says in a tone of such disparaging boredom that it would have brought the meanest girls in her school to tears.

“With many reasons to,” Jim retorts. His brow is crinkled and Molly's thumb twitches with a desire to smooth it with slow gentleness. Jim's chest rises and Molly knows he is trying to rein in his rising temper. For her, as much as for himself. “Will you at least talk to Seb first?” Jim asks.

“What, so he can try to talk me around for you?” Molly scoffs. “This is a _no_ , Jim. Leave me alone.”

Jim pulls out his phone anyway. Molly sighs and starts walking. “Where are you?” she hears Jim ask petulantly. “She's being _difficult_.”

Molly tosses her ponytail as though she disagrees at all with that statement.

Sebastian's voice on the other end of the line makes her step falter. The sudden, vivid _ache_ of nostalgic loss fills her chest as she hears Sebastian's curt, put-upon, reasonable, lovely voice.

Molly tries to give herself a shake but feels very much like a puppet with a cut string. “Please just leave this,” she asks Jim with feeling. He stares at her with those unforgettable dark eyes and Molly is frozen in place.

This is an awful idea. She should leave. 

Sebastian is -unsurprisingly- not far away. Molly swallows hard as she recognises his familiar walk and strong build amongst the ordinary pedestrians of London.

Seb reaches Jim's side first but he takes one look at Molly and whatever he sees moves his face in such a way that something within her just _cracks_.

Sebastian carries all his muscle right on past Jim and pulls Molly towards his chest with all of the force of an older sibling dragging a young witch to Platform 9¾. His chest is near as solid as a wall, but it yields to her in a way that makes something flutter in Molly's legs. Her knees buckle as hot, burning wetness covers her face and if Sebastian wasn't holding her up against his comforting bulk she would surely have fallen in a mound on the cracked pavement.

Molly cries and hates herself for it, but all the strength she dredges up in herself she only uses to reach up and wrap her arms around Seb's thick, warm neck. He rests his chin on her scalp and holds her tighter than she can grip her decisions.

Sebastian twists to give Jim a sidelong look. “What did you do to her?”

“Me?” Jim shrieks. “I don't understand the workings of your puny little human minds, trust me on that.” The vivid handprint on his cheek has faded to a mottled red oblong. It remains eye-catching on his pale skin.

Sebastian noses Molly. “Did you hit him?”

Molly winces. “I want you both to go away,” she mumbles into Seb's suddenly damp shirt.

“Do you want me to let go?” Sebastian asks. His upper arms are thicker than her thighs but she feels safe with them wrapped around her.

Except that she doesn't, because this is too safe, too comforting, too dangerous.

“No,” Molly snorts. Her shoulders shake and she feels close to a hysterical laugh. She presses her face back into into Sebastian instead and settles for trying to suffocate herself.

He rubs her back, leaving her bra fastening well alone. “Are you in trouble, Little Mouse?”

Molly shakes her head, eyes closed as tight as her chest feels. Her breathing is ragged. “No. I… I need you both to go.”

Sebastian ignores the face Jim makes at him. “We can only go if we think you're safe, Molls.”

“I… I just… I need you to go before I start feeling it all okay?” Molly tells Seb's tear-streaked pec. “I've just moved on and need you both to go.”

Sebastian rubs her back some more. He seems reluctant but focused on her needs. He was good at that. “Are you sure?” Seb asks.

Molly nods mutely, willing her face not to betray her, and tries to peel away from his warm, comforting bulk.

Seb looks down from somewhere above six feet high and continues, “...Because that's not how it seems from what you've been writing online.”

“Not recently!” Molly protests. She hasn't posted anything new in ages.

Except… someone reblogged her recently. That got a bit of attention.

“Well, we've been away for a while and there's been a lot to get through,” Sebastian says. “You write a lot. And it-”

“Was just nonsense. Meaningless wish fulfilment and killing time,” Molly says. “Jim can't be here. After what he did with his face splashed everywhere? Someone will recognise him.”

Seb gives Jim another look. “I did tell him to keep out of sight.”

The Irishman gives them a mostly droll look.

Molly chuckles weakly. It is a wet sound. “Since when does he do as he's told?”

“Almost never,” Sebastian agrees warmly.

“It's been worse for him since I haven't had you to keep me in check,” Jim tells her. It's packaged as a joke but Molly can't tell if he's warning her or chiding.

“Then be nicer and listen to what Seb says,” Molly retorts from against Sebastian's chest. “He's smarter than you think.”

Jim opens his mouth, catches Sebastian's look, and decides not to quip.

“Can we make sure you're okay at least?” Seb asks Molly. “Have a little chat?”

“Some tea,” Jim adds. Not a question.

Molly shakes her head and pulls away. “I have to go.”

“We can walk you home safe,” Sebastian presses gently.

“We already know where you live and fully intend to follow you regardless,” Jim says.

Of course he does, but Jim probably thinks she needs the extra space for her books. Molly grimaces at him, then regrets it. She probably looks awful with her face blotchier than his sore cheek from her crying and the indentations from Sebastian's clothing.

“Can I carry your bag?” Sebastian asks.

Molly rips it away from his hand too quickly, startled and alarmed, so naturally she spills the contents on the floor. Seb takes in the telling titles before she can snatch them back up. The ladder in her tights grows as she moves.

Jim might be the smart one but Sebastian is the one who tends to get things. Things about people, and feelings. “What age is Watson's kid now?” he asks.

Jim curls his lip. “Sophie?”

“Not Sophie,” Molly says brusquely. “She's my Goddaughter,” she reminds Jim.

He instantly dismisses the children's books from that but Molly can tell from Seb's eyes that he hasn't. He knows Rosie isn't her intended recipient of the books in her trembling hands.

Molly turns and stumbles in the direction of home.

Jim starts after her but she hears Sebastian stop him, or at least slow him. “Give her space,” Seb says, but they follow her at a distance. Molly knows Sebastian is making certain that she gets home safely in her frazzled state. She doesn't dare wonder why Jim cares.

It doesn't stop feeling like a game of cat and mouse until she throws closed her door and slumps down against it.

Toby skids on her flooring with the speed of his concerned approach and Molly smiles softly. She holds out her arms to her cat but something hurts even worse when Toby's nose twitches over her knowingly.


	3. Chapter 3

Keeping secrets has a way of warping a person; their personality and tastes become something other when they start building lie after lie into their life. The bigger the lies, the bigger the changes.

If one is not careful, vast changes lead to cracks.

Molly has for the most part been careful, give or take some undeniable failings. It had started with some admittedly ill-advised online encouragements of a crackpot theorist called Laura who had rather colourful ideas about why the famed Sherlock Holmes and infamous Jim Moriarty had both died in mysterious circumstances. There might (definitely) have been some spite in Molly's enjoyment of Laura's insistence that Jim and Sherlock had faked their deaths to smooch in the sunset together.

Molly likes to imagine how wildly indignant Jim would be about it. She tries not to think about how long-suffering Sebastian might feel about it.

Laura was the first of a number of young women Molly befriended on the internet. Some friendships were fleeting and some were now years strong, but all were a comfort when the major players in her (somewhat lonely) little life had decided to fake their deaths, or couldn't be around her for prolonged periods of time for fear she might expose said faked deaths.

It had been a bit of a relief when Sherlock came back, but it also wasn't, and Molly rather liked retreating back to her online community where things seemed a bit more… straightforward. Or at least, she only had to participate on the internet when she wanted to, and no one was watching her for lies.

No one other than the liars who had faked their deaths of course, but Molly does her best to compartmentalise. The more secrets she gathers the more she likes being online, and she often only socialises outside due to necessity, beyond a few genuine friendships that somehow survived the chaos of her life.

Molly sighs and glares at her laptop, cursing it as much as her lack of self-control. Everyone needs an outlet, but she knew fine well it was perfectly stupid to make such mistakes so… publicly. Jim was hardly going to be fooled by a VPN and a new username.

Molly knows exactly why she made the poor choices that she did, and they were not entirely a blunder on her part. They were somewhat deliberate. 

Molly tries not to burn herself as she makes a cup of tea. She finds herself staring at the teabag in the sink for a beat, brow puckering in confusion. It's supposed to go in the little compost bin the council gave out as part of some green initiative.

Her mind is all over the place today, and little wonder. Molly fishes the sodden teabag back up with a spoon and deposits it in its proper place. She's managed not to drip a trail of tea across the floor and over the bin lid at least.

Molly pulls down her oversized sleeves to cup her tea and feels a smidgeon comforted by the way heat seeps through the wool. She had quite gone off of her cat jumpers after such a long stint of being confined to them whilst pregnant, but had since taken to wearing a discarded cardigan of Richard's that used to smell of Jim.

It might be foolish to miss people as one pushes them away, but being pragmatic does not make one wholly unsentimental.

The steam heats Molly's cheeks and she stares at it aimlessly for a while. Eventually Toby comes to investigate her stillness and Molly takes a sip as though to reassure him somehow.

He curls himself around her feet. She is wearing fluffy bedsocks, but is not cold exactly: she craves a comfort that cocooning herself only apes.

Molly swallows again, slowly. She focuses on the sensation of the hot liquid travelling down her throat.

“He's going to find out, Tobes,” Molly says.

Toby kneads her foot skeptically.

Molly heaves a soft sigh and casts her gaze around her house. It has been overtaken for as long as she can remember by Not-Sophie's toys. Molly chews her lip and resolves herself to get rid of Jim and Seb regardless of her sentiments on the matter.

Sebastian is bound to figure things out, and Jim might be thick when it suits him, but he knows Seb. If Sebastian comes to realise Molly's relationship with Tom it won't be any time at all before Jim crashes into her daughter's life and perhaps wrecks it.

Knowing her luck Tom's parents will find some reason they can't take their granddaughter for the full weekend.

Molly puts her tea aside and rolls onto her back. Toby is a warm weight around her ankles and she stares at the dated plaster fan shapes on a ceiling that she was once much too pregnant to have smoothed over and since grown oddly fond of.

She self-soothes with amusing fantasies of running away to far off places with her daughter. She lists in her head all of the places Jim would hate to visit.

She drags a fat cushion to her chest and thinks of places he would love to go. She imagines Sebastian smiling, bending down to pick up her-

Molly rolls over to face the back of the couch, little knuckles white against the crushed cushion, and begs herself not to think ever at all about how they might react to her having a daughter. Her heart is pounding and her head aches. The thoughts twist her stomach so much she feels dizzy. Molly groans into her surroundings until the pitch heightens into something that threatens to become a screech.

Molly throws herself off of the couch, half-heartedly apologising to a startled Toby, and starts to pick up random toys and bits of discarded domestic life. She uses the purpose of tidying to distract her.

It doesn't quite work, and by the time the living room is the tidiest she's seen it since her former in-laws came around for dinner she isn't tired at all. Molly has even more nervous energy to spend, and she whiles away three hours cleaning a bathroom she already wipes over twice a week.

It's the fresh ache in her back as she hangs over the bath scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing that finally persuades Molly that she has had enough.

She stumbles downstairs and quietly feeds Toby. He is clearly in a mood with her and casts her a meaningful look instead of engaging her in a few minutes of miowed conversation. Molly watches him for a few moments then retreats back through to the living room.

Its tidiness almost puts her on edge again. It makes the environment feel like it is about to be invaded. Molly picks up a packet of scented gel pens and scatters them about the coffee table just to feel something closer to her normal.

Too jittery to read, Molly picks up her laptop and flicks through pointless videos. Eventually her resolve breaks and she checks her social media.

An insidious little banner pings across the corner of her screen announcing to Molly that someone has left her a blog message. The email starts with 'Nose' and that's all it takes for Molly to slam the lid of her computer violently shut.

She knows perfectly well it is ridiculous to instantly pry open her laptop's innards and remove the battery – particularly when the problem is an online comment- but people do always say that ex boyfriends can drive you crazy, don't they?

Molly sleeps poorly that night, and her dreams both arouse and upset her. She cries into Toby's back for a good forty minutes in the morning and eventually only gets up to help towel him dry. He's patient about the whole thing, having become accustomed to the ordeal during her pregnancy, and quite a while after, but Molly feels guilty as she opens a sachet of his favourite wet food.

She doesn't feel like eating, but she feels the need for purposeful activity. Molly checks the fridge for eggs and butter but decides it's not a smart idea to begin baking. She almost spills a kilo of sugar on the floor as she makes herself the first of several cups of tea and feels thankful she listened to her instinct about making cupcakes. She'd have surely set the fire alarm off, then broke a limb falling off of a chair trying to switch its scolding off.

Molly picks up a box of individual cereal; the remaining unwanted type from the multipack that her daughter never eats. She is about to pull it open when the noise of her letterbox makes her jump: there's no mail on Sundays.

Reluctantly, Molly approaches her front door. Lying there on the mat is a copy of 'The Tiger That Came To Tea'.


	4. Chapter 4

It takes Molly three agitated circuits around her home, two cups of tea and one long, muffled scream into a sofa cushion before she is willing to approach the book that has been deposited most unfairly through her letter box.

The little girl in the storybook is called Sophie, but Molly knows that is not really the point of the present / threat. Jim is far too self-absorbed to have pieced things together already, but his pet brute is far from an idiot. Sebastian is a lot more insightful than anyone gives him credit for being. Jim's 'Tiger.'

He cannot come to tea.

The situation is quite impossible and as much as it twists something inside Molly to admit it, neither man can possibly ever be welcome in her home ever again. It's simply a dreadful idea.

Surely if Sebastian has enough of an inkling that she has a family now he'll have the sense to urge Jim to move on before things get… out of hand?

Molly sighs and smooths her hand over the book's smooth cover. It's a perfectly likeable children's book barring the fact that it smells like new and not at all like either of the men. Jim was always in the habit of wearing different aftershave for different characters and this book does not carry the scent of any of them. Sebastian could always be relied upon to smell the same and no matter how much Molly presses her nose to the white pages and breathes in fiercely she cannot glean as much as an atom of Seb's comforting smell from the paper.

Molly has a fondness for tigers. She has always been a cat person and once Sebastian became embroiled in her life, the charmingly biddable and steady soul that he is, Molly could only like tigers even more. Sebastian was a positive association that has her tracing shaking fingers over the book cover's orange illustration of an anthropomorphised tiger.

Molly tries to recollect the story. A tiger invites himself to a tea party and eats and eats and eats. Huge Sebastian with all his height and hulking muscles used to eat what often seemed like Molly's weight in protein-rich foods and skillfully cooked vegetables. Molly closes her eyes and she can hear the big man chewing softly. She can hear potfuls of mouthwatering, exotic dishes simmering as Sebastian floods Jim's open-plan penthouse with the scent of delicious curries and various other culinary wonders. If Jim was in a good mood he'd sit nearby humming cheerfully over his laptop as Seb cooked, and Molly would dangle her legs off of the expensive, cool marble countertop as Sebastian paused nibbling offcuts of vegetables for long enough to tell her where he got each recipe from. He had lived in Iran and India in his youth, and various parts of the middle east during his army years. On rare occasions Sebastian would cook something atypical that he picked up during his time at Oxford, and if Jim was in one of his moods Seb would cook whatever the petulant little brunet was inclined to eat. Wherever Sebastian was there was always good food.

Molly presses the heel of her palm into her eyes and tells herself firmly that she is not going to weep over the memory of a Thursday night biriani. 

Molly blinks and flicks to the end of the storybook. The little protagonist makes space for the tiger in her life but he never ever comes back.

As he oughtn't, Molly reminds herself. Jim's Tiger and Jim himself needed to depart from Molly's life before she started to make the painful mistake of making room in her life for them.

They do not belong together. Not anymore.

Molly considers shoving the book right back out of her letterbox for a beat. Instead she carries the children's storybook through to her living room. Before long she is curled listlessly on the couch flicking morosely through the colourful illustrations.

She does not immediately notice the note stick inside the book's pages. When she does, Molly intakes a sharp breath and stares at the familiar handwriting for some time before being able to bring herself to decipher the words.

She stands abruptly, holding the offending item tightly, and carries it over to a bookcase. She shoves 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea' unceremoniously out of sight behind a number of significantly thicker tomes.

Molly marches herself into her shower and scrubs her skin pink in the hope that if the action does not distract herself she might at least feel clean. Afterwards she merely feels a mixture of vexed and bereft instead.

Molly reluctantly searches out her phone and switches it on. She would quite happily disappear instead into some green zone or a deserted island given the circumstances, but there is always the chance that her daughter's grandparents will get in contact.

There is a number of texts waiting for her. Molly doesn't need to recognise the number to know they are from Jim. Eventually she opens the most recent one. ' _Sebastian says you'll be cross if I start tattooing messages inside fresh cadavers, Nose, so it's in your best interests to respond to me._ '

It takes Molly a shameful amount of time to type back 'go away' and even longer before she manages to press 'send'.

Three dots dance across the bottom of her screen, disappearing only to reappear then disappear again tauntingly. Molly hates them. And, perhaps, herself, or at least her current weakness.

She almost curses when there is a thud at her front door. Thankfully it is her daughter, who waves off her grandparents confidently and lets herself into the hallway.

The girl blinks and frowns in puzzlement as she takes in her surroundings. “Hey Mum? What happened to the house?”

Molly wipes at her face surreptitiously. “What do you mean, baby girl?”

Molly's daughter wrinkles her nose. “Are gran and grandpa coming over?” Everything's very… clean.”

Molly messes up the couch cushions behind herself. “Oh, no, darling. I just… felt like tidying up. The house needed it.”

The child gives her mother a skeptical look.

"I clean this place sometimes," Molly says defensively.


End file.
